I thought of Dave's article as really a set of parables to learn from, and I did learn from them. I saw myself in a few of the characterizations, to some degree. Not overmuch, I hope, but a little and that is enough for me to do some self examination. Just knowing that someone could call these behaviors "from hell" is enough to cause one to feel put on notice that the world is watching! Someone once wrote that the unexamined life is not worth living. (Dang, I hate when others quote without giving the source, so I just bit the bullet and Googled it to learn it was Socrates...whoever he is *wink*.)

Is Dave using some Hyperbole? Sure. But hyperbole has its place so we can look at extremes and (1) decide we do *not* want to be heading in that direction and (2) laugh at it a bit (when in reality we want to cry when we have to deal with some of these types of personalities and work styles) and (3) don't have to feel *quite* so hopeless when we see a few of these same behaviors in ourselves. Cuz hey, "at least I ain't as bad as *all that*".

I think the article was well written. I partially agree with the respondent who said "don't let this stuff rent too much space in your head" because it is often detrimental to make up our minds about people and write them off as this type or that type. No one's forever stuck, not even Scrooge, remember? But I would give it a *little* room in your heads for sure because it is good to know how behaviors affect others. That annoying accountant probably sees himself (myself? ) as a steward of the company and doing good by his coworkers... were he to find out he was being a p-i-t-a, he might be willing to change -- if someone he trusts and who didn't judge him as "from hell" showed him a better way.

And yes, Dave, I believe Scott Adams *was* a "disgruntled employee". He has said as much. He just went on to earn enough youk-know-what money to not have to stay one.

I spent eight years on a project managed by an "accountant". If offices were being shuffled and moved, every engineer, physicist, mathematician, and computer geek on the project came to work in jeans and shoved desks, chairs, PCs, and cable around. We used to say, we're the world's most expensive moving company. But to the "accountant", it was easier to steal our time away from the deliverables we were supposed to be working on, than to hire a couple of guys to come in and be done with it in a day.

One type I haven't seen discussed yet are what I call the "Furies", after the hateful pseudo-deities of Greek mythology who chase the hapless protagonist forever with scourges. These customers are not smart, and they are definitely not your friends. Nothing you do for them is ever fast enough, or good enough. Their conception of what you do is "point and click". Since it's fast whenever they point and click to a mature application, it should only require that you point and click an entire database into existence, complete with everything they haven't thought of yet. Some of us techie types are neurotic, in that we might tend to think if we don't understand a technology, it might be that it's over our heads. The "Fury" doesn't have that problem. A true "Fury" will assume that if she doesn't understand a technology, it is therefore simple. And a "Fury" would rather be tied to fiery log and force-fed her own spleen than think through a list of requirements, put them on paper, and sign them. That would just get in the way of months of recriminations, during which time you'll hear the following phrase many times: "We changed that requirement -- I'm sure I sent you an email."